Maryville Academy has launched Parent Cafés in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, offering families dinner, childcare, and a safe space for peer-to-peer connection. Here's how the Augustus Tolton Peace Center is becoming a hub for family strengthening.

"Your children are not your children." Kahlil Gibran's words take on new urgency when we consider the separation of migrant families at the US border, and the echoes of a much longer American history of tearing families apart. Dena Chapman reflects on what we value, and what it means to truly believe that it takes a village.

Forget SMART goals. BSF's CEO introduces the LHASA goal — Living Holistically As Sacred Adventure — and reflects on what it really means to pursue vitality when the destination is less important than the path.

What happens when Parent Cafés take root in Kibera, Nairobi, with no outside funding and a community determined to grow? BSF CEO visited the Soweto Forum Parent Café teams in 2018 and found the Protective Factors alive, well, and expanding into micro-enterprise.

Family engagement is one of the most-cited and most poorly executed goals in child welfare. A parent with lived experience breaks down why the gap between philosophy and practice persists, and what relationship-based approaches can do to close it.

When two Mohawk brothers were reported to police during a college campus tour, it prompted the question: what does it take to genuinely accommodate people outside our own cultural frame of reference? BSF explores how transformative conversations build the capacity to do exactly that.

What if strengthening families worked the way immunology does — building inner resilience rather than targeting problems? BSF's CEO shares the theory of change behind Parent Cafés and why empowered parents are the real agents of transformation.

As key players in New York’s City’s first primary prevention initiative, the Be Strong Families East Team headed out to New York City in November to introduce the Strengthening Families™ Protective Factors framework and Parent Cafés.

Chinese Parent Cafés have taken off in San Francisco thanks to the efforts of Be Strong Families Board Member Sandy Baba. For her PhD dissertation, “Towards a Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate and Responsive Family Engagement Model for Low Income Chinese Immigrant Parents in San Francisco: A Qualitative Analysis,” Sandy conducted a four-year research study adapting BSF’s Parent Café model for the Chinese community.